kansas_jeeping

Long story short: Steering column was totaled by the guy who owned the Jeep before me. Jeep needed to be started by manually pulling on the push rod (sounds backwards!) that goes down the steering column to the starter switch. That rod broke to the point that I couldn't pull it to start the Jeep.

Steps taken: Dropped the steering column and found the switch. Disconnected the plugs from the switch (one black and one blue).

Blue (3 wires): Yellow: Ignition; Green: Starter; Brown: wipers/radio
Black (5 wires): Red: Battery; Orange: Accessories/Clock; Black/Gray & Gray: Instrument panel; Purlpe: Not sure

Used a crude bridge wire to jump between the slots in the plugs to determine which wires were which. Cut some new wiring and hooked up my universal ignition switch (which has 4 posts on the back: Ignition, Battery, Starter, and Accessories).

Turned the key and all seems to work great. Jeep starts, run, all lights, gauges, and electronic components seem to work. No problems with the radio up to this point.

Unhook everything and add my heat-shrink tubing to the wiring. Hook it all back up to ignition switch.

The problem: Now when the radio is turned on (ignition switch in either Accessory or Run) there is a static coming from all of the radio speakers. The static is over the top of the music coming from the radio but is overpowering the music. Way too noticeable to leave it the way it is.

To me it sounds like I'm picking up on current coming from the other wires or something like that. Thought maybe my connection was bad so I hooked the Brown wire (straight out of the Blue plug) directly to the ignition switch and same problem occurs. Checked my fuse panel for blown fuses but no luck, all fuses are good.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Things to test?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

TrekkerJmm

I would put a noise filter (a good one not a cheap one) in the radio/amp if you have one in there, also re-ground the radio. does it do it with a CD in there?...Tj

kansas_jeeping

No CD player in this old school rig. It's an '87 with a tape deck! Does the factory switch have a built-in noise filter? Guess I'm just not sure why the problem exists after switching out the ignition switch. Would the filter be applied to the power cable going into the back of the radio?

TrekkerJmm

Yes also disconnect the antenna first and see if you still hear the noise on FM, if you dont then your antenna may be shot...Tj